ll
of the river, "the Silvery Cooum."

It was warm and damp last night, and many mosquitoes were inside our
curtains--didn't feel up to painting much, but took out a sketch book
and our hired victoria; the horse jibbed and tied itself and the traces
and the victoria into a knot and kicked up a racket generally in the
hotel porch, and we got it extracted in time, then it insisted on taking
the victoria along the pavement till I was glad G. was not with me--a
fool would have stayed in it--I found I needed a shave, and left as it
pranced past a barber's shop. The barber, an Italian, spoke six
languages; I should think he felt Madras deadly dull.

After the breakdown of my prancing steed--rickshawed from the barber's
to the Marina. The Marina is only an empty sweep of sand, and beyond
that a strip of blue sea and a pale blue sky and a few fleecy clouds,
simple enough material for a picture; but by my faith! could I only have
put down the colour of that mid-day glow from the sand, and the feeling
of space, and the two blues, of the sea and sky, and the flick of colour
from a scrap or two of drapery on sunny brown figures tailing on to the
long ropes of a Seine net! Out beyond the surf mere dots in the blue
swell, were more figures swimming about the ends of the net splashing to
keep in the fish, and in the edge of the white surf the fishermen's
children were sporting--in with a header through the glassy curve of a
wave, and out again on their feet on the sand and away with a scamper.
Some matrons sat near me, and the smallest naked kids played round me as
I sketched, and two, really pretty girls, the first I've seen in India,
with short skirts and their black hair still wringing wet, came up from
the sea and looked on. Barring these fisher-people, the miles of beach
were empty as could be. What light and heat there was, a crow passing
cast a darker shadow on the sand than its own sunlit back, and a pale
pink convolvulus that grew here and there on the inner sand cast a
shadow of deepest purple. The brown naked men, sweating at every pore,
pulled the drag rope of the net very slowly up the soft dry sand step by
step, their damp, brown muscles sparkling with vivid blue lights. I
think this was the best bit of India I had seen so far, and after a
stuffy night in town to get into the blaze of light and watch these
fellows fishing on the wide blue ocean from such a southern strand was
worth a month on Loch Leven or an hour with